I disagree. The PC gaming market is about $76.67B. That's ~$4M for each of the 18,626 games, most of which are asset flip crap. Many of the remainder are by indie devs (generally <30 people). The article mentions about ~10% of those games receive 500 or more Steam reviews, so we're probably looking at $40M on average person game w/ 500+ reviews (i.e. probably not asset flip crap).

There are only about 20-30 AAA games released every year. The indie game market size is about $5B, and that's across platforms. Even if that was only for PC games, that's still 85% going to AAA studios, as in those 20-30 games that get media attention.

We don't have too many games, we have a problem where too few people buy indie games. The average successful indie studio isn't making $40M per game, it's likely much less than that.

This isn't a problem. For the first time in a very long time, I actually have a queue of games I want to play and din't just mindlessly scroll steam store or wait for big releases. In fact, I no longer follow game releases, there is something at any given time I can find to play

Reviewers rave about a game, I pick it up and play it, and they're raving about a new one before I've finished that last one.

That's why i only wishlist games that i'm interested in. by the time i get around to them, there's usually a sale and/or price drop. Some games have been on my wishlist for years, while I'm working through my backlog, waiting for their price to drop even further.

You dont have to buy every game a reviewer hypes.

And then i play some city builder that cost $20 for 300 hrs

The article seems primarily focused on new games. And the article still makes some great points, but when you factor in older games the problem gets bigger.

I am not going to say that old games were better or that "they just don't make them like they used to". What I will say is that a lot of older games that are super cheap on Steam or out of print entirely are still great. There are occasionally new great games being released of course (I haven't played Hades 2 yet but I expect it to be great, for example). But there's a lot of new games being released where I think... "Why would I spend $70 or $80 on this when I already have this backlog of older games? Why would I spend my time playing 7/10 games when I have dozens of 9/10's sitting in my library waiting for me?"

This doesn’t make sense. Nobody is supposed to ingest all media. It is impossible.

You can’t hear every song. You can’t watch every movie. You can’t see every painting.

It should be celebrated that we have so much accessible art and entertainment.

Yup.

The overabundance of games is killing great games.

Can't tell you how many fantastic multiplayer games I've bought only to find out they're ghost towns or become ghost towns soon after purchasing. And it's because players are so spread out over so many games. 20 years ago these games would have been major successes with a huge player base for years, but they're dead on arrival or within a few months. It's a real bummer.

That being said, I'm going to plug Mycopunk. Just got it and it's great. Like Deep Rock Galactic and Risk of Rain 2 had a baby. We need more players though. Came out in July. Currently on sale. But base price is cheap.

Bullshit propaganda, sorry not sorry. The problem isn't too many games, its reviewers overhyping too few games. Gta6, marathon, whatever the heck else, seriously do some basic research and you'll find great games at a great pace. There is, in fact, room for all games in the market.

XD

This is a good thing for everyone besides the capitalists who seek to profit from their game.

We need a UBI so these artists can just make the games they want, and so "too many games to play together" is no longer a financial issue.

Again, wealth redistribution fixes a problem phrased by news as a consumer problem.

I don’t feel there are too many games, because I can simply buy fewer games, but I do miss the feeling that there are games that everyone is buying and we’re all playing at the same time. I felt like everyone I knew was playing BG3 and we were all talking about it all the time. I don’t want to only play those kinds of big, blockbuster games, but I do want a few of them per year.

I like having a lot of choices. You don't need to play all the games!

The problem they describe will self-correct; the "market" will drive that. But it might not be pretty. The things below are already happening, but will be further instigated:

New AAA non-franchise titles will be less common because return is less likely amongst the sea of new games coming out. Investors will continue to gamble on them, but they'll be fewer and further between.

Mid-budget AA games not in a niche will disappear. You'll still have your city builders, your milsim squad shooters, your competitive RTS games, but you won't be seeing many new AA action platformers, multiplayer CoD style shooters, block puzzlers, adventure RPGs, etc. They'll either be bare budget / indie or mega budget.

You'll see dev cost continue to be driven down to mitigate this risk, making quality suffer. Asset flips, AI, and outsourcing will increase for most studios that don't get recurring revenue from live service games.

Indies will continue to be random breakout hits, but their studios will die fast because followups to their breakouts often drown in the sea too.

Being an employee in the industry will probably mean jumping from company to company where you might only stick around for 1 - 2 titles before a major layoff. Contracting will get more common.

I’m not sure there’s any solution to this problem. Returning to the era of gatekeepers would be a regression, and the increased democratization of game development has led to more creative and interesting products all around. This glut may be intimidating for players, but it also presents them with more choices than ever before, so long as they can ignore the FOMO of not jumping on every new release as soon as it hits.

But for the companies investing hundreds of millions of dollars into games that need to move huge numbers to break even, this is no small challenge. And it’s just getting harder every year.

Solution is simple, stop spending millions of dollars on the same bloody IP and cash grabs and give your devs some freedom.

Going to need a global wave of union organization to at least get royalties on sales determined for contribution levels. That's unlikely to be incredible money but anything is better than nothing as you age towards their elder years

Besides that, no real solution. It's happened to every art industry. It turns out there's probably been an incredible amount of artistic talent every year throughout the millenniums but it's just the last couple decades where it didn't require super levels of luck and financial backing to make it

How comes movies aren't like this? I feel like there are so few movies but so many games.

Dear video game developers,

There are too many video games nowadays. Please eliminate three.

I am not a crackpot.

The first and foremost problem of the Videogame Industry is the videogame corporations. They

Over work and under pay workers

Transformed modern gaming into gambling

Enable pedophiles to run rampant on their platforms while censoring people who stop them (notably Roblox)

Needlessly price hike software and hardware

Purchase popular indie studios then shut them down

Etc

It does feel like the market is so saturated now.

In the end it's up to us to vote with our wallets and spend how we want.

My gaming backlog is so big ... I don't really feel the need to buy new games unless it's something universally loved, like Clair Obscure.

Aside from that, I really ought to work on my backlog.

Whether I succeed in this impulse control is another story ... Lol.